The Chaos Orb

This puppy drops at the end of a Heroic Cata Instance.

But Only Blacksmiths, Tailors, Engineers, and Leatherworkers can roll on them.

And they're bind on pickup.

And all sorts of cool and necessary in-game items use them.

So if you're a BS, Eng, LW, or Tailor, GET TO RUNNING THOSE HEROICS!!!!  Then offer your services to the guild.  I'd suggest that every Chaos Orb should be valued appropriately and should be compensated appropriately, even amongst guild members.  Those suckers are still quite rare at this point.  And in high demand!



Trolls are not Tolerated

I had to boot 2 noobs the other day for trolling on another guilds vent, AND on the public trade chat.  Apparently these 2 kids didn't like a guild named Wrath. Not a lot of people do. So they decided to start talking shit about them. So they started talking shit back. It escalated, and their GM asked me why some of my peeps were talking shit.

I asked who, she told me know, I said I don't know. I don't know them. And then i gkicked them.

You have to be some kind of idiot to talk shit about someone in their vent, when you don't even belong to one of theirs. Its like going to someones house uninvited at dinnertime, serving yourself a plate of dinner, and then insulting the cook. 

"But we were defending the guild, bro!"

That was the worst thing he could have said.  The guild has NEVER needed defending from anything. You give your fellow players a crap name when you do shit like that.  And that will earn you an instant ban.

Had these losers ever taken the time to install mumble, then maybe they'd have gotten off with a warning.  But since trolling was more important than hanging out with the guild, they're free to troll all they want elsewhere.

Side Note:  I personally will never invite a new toon with fucked up spellings.  One of the dudes name was Echo, with a fucked up E, and the other guys name was Dots, with a fucked up O.  I dont remmeber which of the 24 E's or 30 O's they were, so I can't link their profile.  It just makes it difficult to type out their name, and for the most part, everyone that I've come across that does that shit is usually an asshole.

I've been playing - not blogging

Cataclysm hit.

It was always my intention to be one of the 1st lvl 85s'. I didn't think i'd hit server 1st.  As a clothie I knew I'd have to rely on at least 1 other person with me to do it and there wasn't too many peeps in the guild dedicated to getting there ASAP.  Colangus (Norm) was the only other real hardcore one, and then others followed.  I think I hit 85 within 40 hours.  I did eventually sleep for a few hours after playing for like 24 hours straight. 

I loved the experience. I was maybe the 20th person on the server to hit 85, and the 3rd of 4th priest to do so. I'd totally do another marathon session. Having coffee handy is a good idea, though eventually the coffee would get cold, so i'd ice it down and keep going to town.

I stunk around 11am the next day.  Stayed in my funk until around 4pm when I took a shower. I took a smoke break every 4 hours just to stand up and stretch.  By 8pm I was already unfocused. I kept dying, and rule number one of powerlevelling is DONT FUCKING DIE. I'd been up for nearly 40 hours and it was clear that I wasn't going to hit 85 so I slept.  I woke up a while later, quested and hit 85 around 7pm the next night.  Soloing Twilight Highlands in a T-Shirt is difficult, especially as a shadowpriest with no real BOOM power.

Since then the guild has many level 85s. We have a good amount of peeps already running heroics, which is crazy. Me?  i've been too busy that I've not even run all the regulars yet.  I've bought myself 3 epic pieces, however.  And I also maxed out enchanting and tailoring and cooking and fishing. spent a lot of gold doing that.

My initial investment of 15k in gold towards glyphs has paid out in multitudes.  I dare say I've made damned near 300k in gold, but have spent a lot of that on mounts, giving it away to friends, training skills, etc etc etc.  The coffers are now beginning to run thin, and it may be time to start evaluating the best methods to start banking in on this expansion.

The guilds a pride and joy right now.  We have over 300 members, with at least 20 online at the same time usually.  We've hit up to 33 at times, and thats huge for us.  Considering at least half of those are bad asses that are gunning for endgaming, that makes me happy.  As of this writing we should be a level 8 guild already, which is I guess what all real hardcore guilds should be at if we're all hitting the daily cap, so thats a good thing.  It separates us from the scrub fly by night guilds. Why would anyone want to join a guild that doesn't have repairs, 10% mounted speed, 10% bonus rep, and 10% bonus XP? 

Xmas and New Years have put a crunch on my time, and I've not run as many hardcore things, and I'm halfway OK with that. Levelling Professions has been OK, because I know that I'll be running heroics and regulars for MONTHS anyways for JPs and VPs. As a healer, I'll admit its hard and I've not been wanting to go full force head on just quite yet. Is it a lil residual burnout from the daily constant Lich King?  Probably. Leading a guild, leading raids, trying to be as cutting edge as time allowed took its toll so I've slowed down a bit after the initial burst to 85. But the guilds filling up with hardcores, so I don't feel TOO guilty about slacking off a little bit.  I DO have every intention of going into the raids come January, however.  15 days of heroics should get me and a few other peeps ready for those.

Thats it for the update!  Regular articles will resume in the next few days!  Thanks for reading!

Theres a Zombie on your lawn!

I recently started playing Plants vs Zombies after avoiding it because I always have something else to spend my freetime. So Lau and I decided to give it a go this past weekend. 

6 hours later, we realize that way more than 60 minutes has passed, and its now somewhere around 3am.

Its a good game.

Meanwhile, My ICC teams stuck at Lich King.  The group I'm with raids 2 maybe 3 hours a night at about 3 nights a week. And then we usually have to wait for players, wait for "brb" and "afk real quick" etc etc. Then there's always the chance that someone doesn't know the fight, and then stands in Infest, wiping us all without knowing exactly why.

Best effort was at 50% sometime last week.  Gonna cross my fingers and keep on trying.

OBVIOUS Gold Tip of the Moment:  If you have the time, start grabbing those herbs, and start milling. Research the AH and find out what glyphs are selling high, and craft those. 4.3 has dropped, and thats pretty much going to be the inspiration for a lot of players. WotLK is pretty much OVER. Catas on the way, and AH players (even the lazy ones) will start looking to ride the wave of sales that Cata's going to bring. Don't get left behind!

And if you don't play the game as hardcore as other, and you don't raid the Lich King, or compete on the AH, give Plants vs Zombies a try.  Google it and buy it or trial it or whatever.  I think they even have a version on Xbox you can try.  Its fun and casual, yet deep, and quirky.

Inscription in Cata

Todays post won't be a long one, as i'm being attacked by a swarm of termites, and want to get a point out to any reader that may stumble upon here.

In Cataclysm, you can learn your glyphs once, and then never have to learn them again.  A lot of people say "well, then that practically kills the glyph market."

All I have to say about that is this:

The Netherweave Bag Market.

Still alive.

Making a crapload of gold daily off it. 

And thats only 4 to 10 available slots.

Why would any decent gold maker think that nobody will be buying glyphs in Cata?

Felicia, A Chocobo, and BRD

I spent half the weekend with my girlfriend doing nerdy things (the other half was spent doing things to counter said nerdy things). One of those things was watching Dr Horribles Sing Along Blog.  Felicia Day, star of the webseries The Guild was in it. 

Shes sexy in a geek way.  I'd love to see her in bigger roles and see what she can do with them.  The way this world is shaping up, she may be a major force in entertainment within a few months. 

Dual speccing is now only 100g.  There's no reason for anyone NOT to dual spec.  I love it because it lets my healing toons also have a levelling spec.  Or a pvp spec. Shame the heirlooms don't automatically switch attributes as well depending on the spec you're playing, but you can't have everything.

The boss that drops the raven mount in Heroic: Setthek Halls no longer requires a druid to be summoned.  You walk in the instance, and 4 minutes later you'll hit his room.  Most lvl 80's that aren't squishy should be able to solo him.  Me being a shadowpriest, I can't.  I've been getting help from DK buddies to 2-man it.

At Blizzcon, it was announced that a few of the old world instances will be drastically changed.  They'll be cutting the instances into pieces, removing certain wings, and even splitting them up into several winged instances.  If you've never done Maraudon, Sunken Temple, or Uldaman, you may want to get a move on and clean them out so you can appreciate the changes when they do finally come around.  I know I seriously hated Wailing Caverns.  I'd get all the way to the maze, miss my freaking jumps, go around and do it again, and then when I thought I cleared it, I had to go back and summon a Murloc. Oh and yeah, also make a detour to the left because there's a boss somewhere else over there. 

Oh, and Blackrock Depths now gets teleporters, like ICC.  About time.  Quite frankly, that place needs a tourguide, big arrows on the walls telling you where to go, and a "summon your friends to you" button.

on the Rise

Seriously, what the hells going on over at the New York Jets offices?  The lovely pictured below is Ines Saenz, and she too worked for the Jets, and had players oogling after her.  That's not a surprise now, IS IT? 

I'm sitting on 147,147g.  The patch brought a wave of people that wanted glyphs.  Those that were prepared raked in mega amounts of gold.  I like to think I was one of them.  Of course, seeing the opportunity, a lot of people that never dabbled in the glyph market have come out to try and get a slice of that pie.  I think that its cute that they will post their wares at 15 - 20g, thinking they're going make all the gold in the world before someone buys out mine at 100g. 

They're scratching for scraps.  They can sell 5 at 20g before peeps start buying my 5 at 100g.  And mine WILL sell at 100g.  And I might raise my fallback.  I don't think the market is going to survive.  Guild members will make glyphs for those that do not want to buy 100g glyphs.  So they hit up the AH, and look for Northrend herbs.  And find out that there aren't any. 

Between the people LF Scribe to avoid paying AH rates, and the Johnny Come Latelys that are itching to start making some serious profits, the AH Herb Market is DRY.  Flower Pickers can get away with selling stacks of Adder's Tounge for 40g. Last week they were lucky to sell a stack for 8g.  I predict that anyone farming Northrend herbs stands to make a very nice chunk of change between now and Cataclysm. 

Once Cata drops, the ink trader will no longer trade away your Inks of the Sea, which is what is currently used to make all the glyphs on the market.  At that point, I think it will be about a good month before a grand amount of herbs start showing up and scribes start mass producing glyphs.  I can easily see all the Johnnys running out of stock, running out of mats, and giving up.  Meanwhile, those that are well prepared can start creeping the prices even higher, as new goblins, tauren paladins, undead hunters, and blood elf warriors also start wanting glyphs. 

I don't mind having a threshold of 30g, being undercut to 12g, and getting my stock back in my box.  I know that eventually, that glyphs going to sell around 100g.  Enjoy the scraps, Johnny.